March 30th, 1997 - March 30th ad infinitum - Part I

"It's not what doesn't kill you makes you stronger...it's that you have to have the strength in you to face it and survive it." - Lisa Pimental

I've started, deleted, amended and restarted this entry about a dozen times and it was all in the hopes of posting it on March 30th, 2012.  It didn't work out that way but I realized for me in this circumstance, the date is not nearly as important as the message.  Now don't get me wrong, this date is infinitely important and so it shall be for the rest of my and Lisa's life, as well as the countless others who were both directly and indirectly involved with the events of that date back in 1997.
Lisa has told this story more times than I can ever know and I've told it both with and without her a number of times myself.  By no means am I an expert on the story, but I like to think I now know enough about it to responsibly share it with all of you. 
This might just be one of the most important entries I ever write whether in this blog or in anything else I do.  I am not writing to shock you, upset you or preach that you are wrong or right in how you live life, I am simply telling the story of Lisa in the last 15 years.  Maybe you'll see the same beacon of light that I do, maybe it will make you think about certain choices you've made in the past, maybe (and hopefully) for those of you with children (especially those entering prom season and soon thereafter, summertime, driving time, party time) you will share it with them.
I've learned so much from Lisa, what she has endured and also about how much strength she has.  I am taking a leap of faith that I can write this, both because I feel like I know the story and since she has shared it enough times, I don't think she would feel I am betraying her trust by placing it here, for "public record" so to speak.  Please, I ask of you, if you've ever read anything I've written here, this is the one that I am asking you absorb into your very being, the one I hope you take to heart and then decide to share with someone around you.  The one you print and place on the fridge as a reminder, the one that like myself, always think about when you decide to drink.
This is the story of Lisa, the light of my life:

March 30, 1997 was a Sunday and it also happened to be Easter that year.  Lisa, a college student, was travelling back from Southern California with her boyfriend at the time (no, not me, we didn't meet until 2001; that'll be another story for another time) via northbound I-5.  Both of them were looking forward to getting home and back into the swing after having Spring Break off.  One final stop was made for food to refuel their bodies and they were off again driving with a sunset to their west over the mountainside.  At around 7pm as they were nearing the Hanford area of I-5, Lisa was nuzzled up in the passenger seat, utilizing the time to catch a catnap when she was awakened by two words sternly yelled out, "Oh shit!"
That would be the last coherent thought Lisa recalled on her own until she woke up nearly three weeks later in a hospital bed from a drug induced coma.  What ensued, was told to Lisa and went like this...While driving in the slow lane, her boyfriend noticed headlights coming up from behind; the amount of reaction time he had was only enough to curse before their small Toyota pickup was flung vertically, end over end seven or eight times up the freeway. 

They had been rear ended by a drunk driver who was travelling near twice the speed they were. 

I am by no means a science major, but to pause on this impact for a moment, Lisa's vehicle was travelling 70 mph, the other driver, about 130 mph.  That Mustang that rear ended them, created an impact with such force it accelerated Lisa's vehicle and actually flung it into the air.  It was the equivilant of something standing still being hit by another object going 60 mph. 
Both vehicles came to rest off the sides of the freeway.  To this day, I've not heard anything about how traffic was impacted around them, but needless to say, on a four-lane highway, one can imagine the backup something like this would cause.  Fortunately, for all parties, there was a group of fledgling paramedics travelling south who witnessed the impact and were able to get turned around and offer immediate assistance to those in the crash.  It didn't take long for police and further paramedic assistance to arrive either.  What they discovered was Lisa's vehicle had been struck so fiercely that the compression had caused both doors on the pickup to swing open leaving Lisa and her boyfriend exposed to the elements through their tumble.  This left her boyfriend with a compound fracture of his left arm and Lisa with severe road rash of her right arm as it dragged on the ground with each tumble.
As bad as that may sound, those were probably the easiest of the injuries to deal with.  But to diverge for a second, so as not to forget about the other car and its occupants, there were four men in that car, who were now out and wandering in the lanes of traffic, possibly slightly in shock, but mainly because they were so drunk, that they didn't realize they were walking in lanes of traffic on an interstate freeway.  The driver of the vehicle was not the owner of the car, but out of their merry band, had decided he was the most sober and so would be responsible and drive his buddies home. 
He blew a .28 alcohol reading into a breathalizer (that is over triple the amount of the legal limit in all 50 states).  As just as a point of reference, the average person drinking alcohol will usually be blacking out or passed out by the time they reach .30 and is beginning to feel the effects of alcohol poisoning.
Back to Lisa and her boyfriend who were being tended for their wounds.  The concern was initially with her boyfriend, who was showing signs of head trauma.  He had bleeding in the eye sockets which typically indicates severe head trauma, whereas Lisa's only outward showing injuries were her arm and a compound fracture of the upper leg.  Fortunately, for her boyfriend, the head trauma ended up being a fairly severe concussion and not something that would be any form of permanent brain damage.

---As a moment of levity to this story, (and as I said previously) Lisa doesn't remember this but has been told, that during her airlift out to a nearby hospital, she got into a fight with the paramedic who was cutting off her jeans to be able to treat her leg.  Not that she thought she was being attacked, but she was mad that he was destroying her brand new, wonderful fitting, cute as hell, jeans!  She tells me this is something that a boy would never truly appreciate, so ladies, I leave you that tidbit, so that you might further understand Lisa's pain of losing a pair of perfect jeans that evening.  Her other disappointment is that she was able to get airlifted on one of those cool super fast helicopters, but can't remember the ride to save her life---

Hidden behind the outward showing injuries of Lisa was the more serious trauma doctors were going to discover once they got her into an operating room.  See, she had been complaining of a stomach ache to the paramedics and had been vomitting intermittently all the way to the hospital.  Now, with her at the facility, doctors took notice of a broken back, two of her lower vertebrae, the leg and the very real possibility that there was internal damage due to the restraint of the seatbelt while tumbling. 
(Mind you, Lisa will tell you that she doesn't blame the seatbelt for her further injuries, without it, this story would have been about the fatality of Lisa, not the struggle to survive.)
It was decided that they needed to go inside and do an exploratory surgery through Lisa's abdomen and find out what exactly was causing the impulse to vomit.  They cut a vertical opening from sternum down to below her belly button and pulled back the skin.  What they were able to find was that the seat belt, while saving her life, had crushed a portion of her colon and it was causing a backed up clogging which would, with enough time, cause Lisa to go into toxic shock and die.  There was no choice, with her opened there, broken leg, broken back and menagerie other injuries, they needed to remove 6-8" of her colon to ensure her survival.  And as the decision was made and they worked to repair her body, they had to now save Lisa's life in a very real way; her heart stopped in the middle of that surgery.

I could be cruel and end today's portion of the story there, recharging my batteries and waiting until I have the strength and steady hand to continue, but I will give you this before I close, one of the more amazing aspects of this story...

Because Lisa was opened up from sternum to waistline, they couldn't do what you so often see on shows like House or Grey's Anatomy, they could not simply put the paddles to her chest and revive her.  First, where would one place the paddles on an open body, second, the jolt could very well cause issues because her body is open, that body bounce could fling some stuff around that really shouldn't be moving.  So instinctually, the lead surgeon reached into Lisa's chest cavity, took her heart into his hands and massaged until it began beating on it's own again.
More to come...